ABSTRACT

In January 1255 Lord Peter 'called the Jew of Bar-sur-Aube, sound of mind, drew up his will.' Although Peter mentioned numerous friends and relatives on whom he bestowed property, rents, cash and objects, all of these references were situated within the local topography of his experience of Bar-sur-Aube and the region of Champagne. His testament provides a verbal description of the urban space of one of Champagne's fair towns and the charitable landscape that Peter and his contemporaries had conceptualized and knew well. The charters and testaments that men and women in Champagne drew up over the course of the thirteenth century, when read as descriptive texts, reveal the production and experience of urban space in evocative and telling ways. Most scholarship on medieval wills tends to focus on the wealth distributed and what this says about the testator's social class, gender, personal possessions and habits.